*ping*...*ping*....*ping*....

From: Daniel McCluskey (Volt Comp) <"Daniel>
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 1997 12:22:13 -0800


>'Sides, who says that troll's sonar needs air?
"yeah! rite! me no need air! smash you if say I do!" -- Gurrk, great troll philosopher.
>
>Trolls _always_ see poorly -- those eyes don't work for much inside a
>kilometer, if I recall. With uzuz it's worse. I like the idea of a
>"darkness" carrier, but it seems hard to reconcile with trolls as they
>function.

oops, I really should have put "see" in quotes... I meant that darksence doesn't work in the light... and they have to resort to seeing... I don't however see how not being able to use darksence during the day would be any greater disadvantage to trolls than humans being unable to see at night. If anything, (*caution* rulesy bit!) I would use 1/2 the human darkness disadvantage for (untrained) trolls fighting in light. with training, I think this would be reduced to ~1/4 or further. (Most humans dont notice this disadvantage on account of trolls seeking out dark places to fight -- once they back into a shadowed corner, they can (ds)"see" much better.) A troll caught in a flat, open Plain at high noon really OUGHT to be in a world of hurt.

>Hmmm. Maybe you could make some sort of case that Sound is the
>Darkness sense? (With Sight being the Fire/Light sense, maybe Touch as
>the Earth sense... Dunno. Might be something there). And that in
>Glorantha, Sound is not dependent on air?
I see several problems with the Sound carried by Darkness idea... one is that I have never seen anything to imply that sound decreases with the intensity of light. Also (as was mentioned) Orlanth's "Wind Words" certainly Does imply an air-sound connection.
>
>the way. Or call your local Subere priestess (who _does) have command
>Sylph, as well as Command Everything Else) to give it the boot.

Yeah, but are YOU going to be the poor sap to tell a Subere priestess what to do??? <shudder> it ain't gunna be me! I don't think many subere priestesses ever leave their temples, and there arn't many Wind Lords who would go poking around There (or would live long if they did).
>
> Trolls can "see" textures, right? So as long as
>the ink is a clearly different texture than the writing surface, the troll
>can "see" it as texture X on texture Y. No problem at all, unless the ink
>and the paper are very close in texture.
I don't think that texture differences on the order of ink/paper are going to be detectable to darksence, (we can sence differences in texture by touch, but it is Very hard to read normal writing just our fingers) but this is just IMO. of course, I like the idea of Uz "humanologists" having to train value trollkin to read to them... maybe spelltrading an ocasional Detect Lie from the Lhankor Mhy to weed out the unreliable (Yum! <burp!>.)
>
>> Third, how does the fact that trolls primary sence organ is their
>> nose/jaw (to aim/focus their sonar) translate into troll culture -- a
><snip>
>I think you could smash the jaw, and not cause any harm (well, more harm)
>- -- a broken jaw can still aim. Now, getting a ear torn, or a
>concussion, that'd be a _real_ problem.
Actually, I'm still convinced that the nose would be most crippling... but I havn't really determined just how all this fits into Uz culture...

danm
(doing all I can to hold up the dark end of things... (why would ANYONE want to talk about YELM -- how MORBID! <g>))
>
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